Slider Guide Plate Local Quality and Merging for Fluid-Tight Sealing
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Solution Overview
Problem
Prior slider designs for fluid-tight fasteners face challenges in ensuring consistent sealing due to misalignment and deformation of sealing lips, particularly with thin guide plates that are unsupported and difficult to mold as integral parts, leading to increased production costs and potential misalignment errors.
Innovation Solution
The slider is designed with upper and lower wings, a guide post, and an integrally formed guide plate, which are molded as a single unit to enhance strength and alignment, featuring a thicker guide plate with tapered sections and chamfers to reduce deformation and improve sealing lip orientation, while maintaining the guide plate's structural integrity.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Manufacturing precision
If a thin guide plate is used to extend between the outer ends of the coupling elements and the sealing lips, then alignment accuracy of the coupling elements is improved, but the guide plate becomes difficult to mold as an integral part and production cost increases
Solution Approach 1:
The guide plate features localized thickening at critical sections where it joins the upper and lower wings, while maintaining a thinner profile in other areas. This local quality variation enables the guide plate to be molded as an integral part while providing sufficient structural support for accurate alignment of the coupling elements.
2Manufacturing precision
If the guide plate extends a relatively long distance from the guide post, then it creates upper and lower paths for accurate alignment, but it becomes unsupported and cannot be reliably molded as an integral part
Solution Approach 1:
The guide plate is designed with localized thickening at the根部 (root) section where it joins the guide post, providing structural support and strength. The plate maintains a thinner profile extending outward to create the alignment paths, thus balancing structural integrity with alignment functionality.
Solution Approach 2:
The guide plate incorporates tapered sections that transition the thickness dimension gradually, and chamfers that provide dimensional variation at the edges. These dimensional changes allow the guide plate to extend a long distance for alignment while maintaining sufficient support through strategic thickening at critical locations.
3Ease of manufacture
If the slider is made of three separate parts with the guide plate sandwiched between wings and guide post, then assembly is possible, but production cost increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The guide plate is integrated as an integral part of the slider, merging previously separate components (guide plate, upper wings, lower wings, and guide post) into a single molded structure. This eliminates assembly steps and significantly reduces production cost while maintaining the functional capability of creating alignment paths.
Solution Approach 2:
While merging components, the design incorporates segmentation through tapered sections and chamfers that allow the integral guide plate to function as distinct structural zones, enabling the single-piece construction to achieve the functional separation needed for proper alignment and sealing.
4Strength
If an integrally formed slider with a thicker guide plate is used, then strength and alignment are improved, but the sealing lips may still slip out from between the wings or coils may slide up alongside the guide plate edge
Solution Approach 1:
The chamfers on the guide plate are positioned and angled to preliminarily guide and orient the sealing lips and coils into the correct position before they engage with the wings. This preliminary action prevents the sealing lips from slipping out or coils from sliding up by establishing proper alignment in advance.
Solution Approach 2:
The chamfers create localized geometric features at specific edges of the guide plate, providing directional guidance and retention functionality at critical locations while maintaining the overall integral structure and strength of the thicker guide plate design.
Data Source
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Figure 3
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AI summary
A slider20 for a fluid tight slide fastener has upper and lower wings 21, 22 joined by a guide post 23 and a guide plate 24 provided between the upper and lower wings and spaced there from to cooperate with the upper and lower wings 21, 22 to guide coupling elements and sealing lips of the slide fastener. The upper wing is provided with upper side flanges 27 which extend from the trailing end 26a of the upper wing 21 to a position at least as far forward as the forward end 23b of the guide post23.